1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a measurement control apparatus, more particularly-relates to a measurement control apparatus for measuring a measurement controlled object using a processor (PC) through an interface.
As one example, there is a measurement control system for an electronic control unit (ECU) mounted on a vehicle which measures and evaluates the same using a PC. This system is realized by a measurement control apparatus. In general, a PC is used as the heart of the measurement control apparatus. In this case, the digital input/output (I/O) board is often used.
The digital I/O board for a PCI bus is similarly connected to a digital I/O unit of the measurement controlled object (the above ECU etc.). In this case, the level of the digital I/O board of the former (PC) is usually a TTL level of for example 5V. As opposed to this, the level of the digital I/O unit of the latter (ECU) is the battery voltage-GND level of for example 13V. Therefore, the measurement control apparatus has to include as components not only the above PC, but also an interface circuit for achieving a match between the two electrically.
On the other hand, according to the above example, different types of ECUs are used as the ECUs mounted in vehicles according to the types of the vehicles. This being the case, the interface circuit also must be selected to be compatible with the ECU in question. The present invention relates to a technique for selecting an interface circuit compatible with each ECU.
2. Description of the Related Art
As will be explained later with reference to FIG. 10, in general a measurement control apparatus is mainly comprised of a measurement control processor and interface circuits. When a measurement controlled object is given, one interface circuit compatible with that object is used so as to output measurement control data compatible with the object from the processor to the object. When response data is returned from the object operating based on this measurement control data, this is input to the processor through the interface circuit. The processor analyzes this response data to evaluate the object. Therefore, in a conventional measurement control apparatus, there was the problem that considerable work and time were required to assemble a compatible interface circuit into the apparatus when a new measurement controlled object was presented for measurement.
Further, when a user performed a later explained reconnection operation or channel reconfiguration operation, a mistake by the user (error in reconnection or error in reconfiguration) in the work for reconnection or channel reconfiguration would cause the measurement controlled object to break down or sometimes burn out.